The packaging of media content, such as video or audio content, into digital media files has made the exchange of the content very easy and convenient for users. However, users freely exchanging content may violate the content owner's property rights. Content owners also want to restrict the copying of copyright protected content. There are many examples of technologies that make the transfer of copyright protected content very difficult. When physical media is used to store content, permanently or temporarily, for example in electronic purchase, rental and subscription movie service business models, content owners or their licensees use a variety of cryptographic binding methods. These methods typically use a unique media or device identifier or similar player attributes in a cryptographic function to protect the content from being copied or transferred such that it may be said to be bound to the device. Generally, this binding of the content is based upon a particular playback device, which is undesirable for users. Users may want to play their content on a different device than the device that received the content or they may want to transfer it among several personal devices.
One approach involves peering of content, where users transfer data amongst themselves. In order to preserve copyrights and to avoid pirating of the content, a ‘non-autonomous’ peering system may be employed. In contrast to a typically peering system, where users transfer content freely, the system is ‘non-autonomous.’ Non-autonomous' as used here means that the system includes mechanisms that only allow transfer of the content with the assistance of a centralized authority, while allowing users to transfer media content between their own compliant devices. A peer in this system consists of an end-user owned device acting as the source for a transfer, while in most other systems content resides on a server for download.
Examples of a non-autonomous peering system can be found in U.S. Pat. No. 7,165,050, and US Patent Publication No. 20060064386, both titled, “Media on Demand Via Peering.” An example of methods of manufacturing and binding components usable in a non-autonomous peering system can be found in U.S. patent application Ser. No. 12/369,708, “Simple Non-Autonomous Environment, Watermarking And Authentication,” filed Feb. 11, 2009. U.S. patent application Ser. Nos. 12/369,708, and 12/713,111 discuss the use of a peering system in conjunction with flash memory devices.
With the increasingly less expensive and wide proliferation of flash memory devices, a very real possibility arises of pirates using flash memory devices to clone valid devices originating from the content providers or legitimate users of a peering system. The pirates can reproduce a huge amount of content on cloned devices with very simple hardware and in a very short period of time.